The Shadow

The Shadow by Mary White Ovington This 1920 novel by Mary White Ovington follows the aftermath of an illegitimate birth within a prominent Florida family. The prologue centers on Judge George Ogilvie's crisis when his daughter Lillias gives birth to a child fathered outside wedlock. Unable to face the social disgrace, Ogilvie's wife removes the newborn and abandons it in a Black family's cabin, leaving money with the infant. Lillias, learning the baby has been taken away, dies from the shock. The narrative then shifts to 1910 Merryvale, the Ogilvies' ancestral plantation on a Florida river, charting the region's post-plantation decline. Lee Merryvale returns from college to find the once-grand estate depleted—timber harvested, orchards diminished—yet the household structures and social hierarchies persist among descendants of former masters and enslaved people. The setting establishes themes of historical decline, family reputation, and class persistence in the post-Reconstruction South.